In a bid to boost plummeting voter turnout rates, the B.C. government wants to introduce Internet balloting for future provincial and municipal elections. But research from Canadian municipalities and European nations has cast doubt on the power of e-voting to encourage more citizen engagement.

“All of us are interested in increasing the voter turnout in elections,” Shirley Bond, Minister of Justice and Attorney General, said in a written statement asking B.C.’s Chief Electoral Officer to appoint an independent panel to examine the logistics of Internet voting...

Ya.

That's one important pressing issue in this province.

After all, hardly anybody voted in the HST referendum.

Right?

______Hey!....Anybody up for more bloggocentric audio discussion of all things RailGate in the wake of Bob Mackin's 'NW documentary?...Staytuned for a re-run of a conversation between the Reverend Paperboy and yours truly...Will try and get it up tonight....

"The Pundits' Guide" posits on Bernard von Schulmann's blog that iVoting first needs a universal identity card: "You couldn't implement e-voting without the e-card, and that would be a long expensive process to implement, and would probably fall under federal jurisdiction."

Hey, fab. We were just saying this morning that if we could tape and broadcast some of the conversations we have among friends about politics and other stuff, it would make for really interesting listening.I'm looking forward to what I's sure will become a regular feature at radio CKRossK.

Interesting question...But according to our current (not) Premier, polls don't matter, so why would they waste our money on them:

CBC News May 18, 2012....B.C. Premier Christy Clark’s rebuke this week of polling firms — and the Angus Reid firm in particular — is shocking and unprecedented, a company spokesman says.

The premier said Thursday that Angus Reid’s polling drives public cynicism and that polling results from many companies are not as believable as they once were.

"I think the Angus Reid poll contributes, first of all, to the growing cynicism about polls in general,” Clark said in a conference call from Japan. “I think polls are getting less and less accurate, and I also think that these internet polls that some of the companies are doing now are the least accurate of all."

Angus Reid vice-president Mario Canseco said he's never heard such comments from any leader...

"You know, this is a sitting head of government saying there is a company that cannot be trusted," Canseco said...

{snippety doo-dah}

...Canseco said the Clark government hired Angus Reid to poll voters about the Liberals’ jobs plan...

_____Anon-Above--

So, it's even worse than trivial given that it is not even possible for them to implement unilaterally?

If you want to boost voter turnout, bring back door to door enumeration. Turnout in Canadian elections didn't start to drop until that was eliminated in the nineties under Chretien. Nothing like having someone knock on the door to make sure everyone's registered to remind everyone of their civic duty.